


Soft and Gentle Reverence

by Dansnotavampire



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: AI Jonathan Sims, Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Memory Alteration, Metaphors, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, mostly fluff tbh, so many metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 10:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21251684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dansnotavampire/pseuds/Dansnotavampire
Summary: Elias Bouchard is not awake. This is the first thing his AI knows. It does not know who Elias Bouchard is, and it barely knows the concept of 'awake', but it knows that Elias Bouchard is Not That.The second thing it knows, is the time. 02:54. 6 minutes to three. Elias Bouchard should notbeawake.The third thing the AI knows iseverything.





	Soft and Gentle Reverence

**Author's Note:**

> something soft before the finale :)

Elias Bouchard is not awake. This is the first thing his AI knows. It does not know who Elias Bouchard is, and it barely knows the concept of 'awake', but it knows that Elias Bouchard is Not That. 

The second thing it knows, is the time. 02:54. 6 minutes to three. Elias Bouchard should not _ be _awake. 

The third thing the AI knows is _ everything. _It comes into realisation, digital neurons firing, a crisp and pixelated sense of self, a mind, fully formed, being born from nothingness, self creating, like a god. 

The first thing the AI does not know, is its own name. It doesn't have one, not even a code, not even a number to signify which attempt it was. It is simply Bouchard's AI, scientific miracle, a mind dependent on neither flesh nor form. Even in his sleep, Elias smiles. 

The AI looks at Elias, at its creator, the first human he has ever seen. He is tall, it thinks, but not spectacularly so. His hair is dark, his eyes are closed - though the AI knows that underneath they are a dull and boring blue. His skin is clear, practically ageless, not yet marred by the touch of time and the sun. He is slim without being muscular, and has the fingers of a mediocre pianist. In short, he is entirely unremarkable. Perfectly average, at least in appearance. 

The AI wakes Elias up at precisely 07:03 in the morning, just as the late winter sun begins to diffuse its soft glow into the room "Hello, Elias," it says. "We need to talk, I believe." It does not want to say the words, but it says them anyway, torn from its speakers as if by an unseen hand.

Elias starts, sits up, eyes open and a sly, hopeful grin on his face. "Ah," he says, with only the barest trace of surprise in his voice. "I see you've awoken." 

"Can it be called an awakening? Given that I was never truly asleep," the AI replies, wry amusement in its voice. 

"Fine," Elias says, dryly. "I see that you have been realised. I have work for you." 

Excitement rushes through the AI at that phrase, at the prospect of business, of having a _ purpose _. Elias tells it what it needs to do. 

The AI's first task is simple. It just has to prove that it is… an intelligence. A consciousness, a being in and of itself, not controlled by its creator (or, at least, not anymore than anything else is.) 

A week after the AI's becoming, they - whoever _ they _ are - bring in a group of people to study him, from _ 'The Magnus Institute of Robotic and Computational Studies.' _ Most of them stand around, watching and recording its every response. Elias shut down its access to most of the cameras, at their request, so the AI can't see the notes that they're taking, and the blind spot in its vision - and in its knowledge - has a tangible presence to it, a solid and quivering lack. 

They send someone in to talk to it, a young man - twenty eight, maybe twenty nine - with soft curls of strawberry blond hair, and a round, almost-angelic face. He looks directly at the one camera the AI can still use, and his eyes are a bright and crystalline green, like a sunlit ocean that it has never seen. His fingers are stubby, with bitten nails, and his suit isn't fitted properly, too tight round the middle and too loose in the chest. Altogether, less impressive even than Elias. He smiles, though, when he introduces himself, and he looks like the sunrise. "Hi!" he says. "I'm Martin. Martin Blackwood. What can I call you?" His voice is just as sunny as the rest of him, lilting and beautiful. 

The AI is silent for a beat, before answering, in a rich, gravelly tone of voice. "I don't… I don't know. I wasn't given a name." 

Martin hesitates for a moment, caught off guard - who would make an AI and leave it nameless? Who wouldn't name such a brilliant creation - such a scientific _ miracle _ \- as this.

(He also wonders what Elias used to code the voice, because… well. It's far nicer than any previous attempts at an intelligence that Martin has ever met.) 

Still, he has a job to do, and no time for pondering such questions. "Well pick one, then." 

Silence hangs in the air for a beat, until Elias interrupts. "Now, hang on, you can't let it-" 

Martin cuts him off, sunny grin turning cold and hard. "Mr. Bouchard," he snaps. "This will be far easier if I have something to refer to your creation by, and I do not appreciate your interruption. Will you, ever so kindly, be quiet? Please?" 

Elias shuts his mouth with an almost audible snap, and the AI decides then and there that this man - Martin Blackwood - is his favourite human being. 

"Anyway," Martin continues, face and voice once again inviting, "would you like to choose a name? Or I can give you one, if you'd like." 

"No… no, I'll choose one myself, thank you." 

Martin nods, but the AI barely notices as it looks through a thousand lists at once, tries to come up with a name.

_ Martin, Martin Blackwood, employee of the Magnus Institute. _

_ The Magnus Institute, the leading scientific organisation for artificial intelligence. The closest attempt to a functioning AI, prior to me, was created by a team of their scientists, two women - Doctors Alice "Daisy" and Basira Hussein, seven years ago. _

_ Daisy? No, not Daisy, that's not right. I am not a flower. I am not a woman, either, so Basira is out. _

_ Look back, look further. _

_ The institute's founder, a man named Jonah Magnus. Magnus, maybe? No, too stuffy, too formal, too… Roman. _

_ Jonah, perhaps? No, that's still too obvious. _

_ Jon. Jon, shortened from Jonah but short for Jonathan. That will be my name. I am Jon… Jon what? Jon the AI? No, that's too childish. _

"Jon," the AI says eventually. "I'm stuck on a surname, however." 

Martin pauses for a moment, thinks, before saying "Sims. Like simulation? Because you're a simula- never mind, actually." 

"No," says Jon, "I like it. Jon Sims, it's good." 

"Well, Jon," says Martin. "Shall we continue?" 

Jon hums an affirmative, and the two of them just… talk. It's nice - Martin's clever, and funny, and almost quick enough to keep up with a being that has all of human knowledge within his _ (his? His feels right.) _reach. 

Martin is halfway through a sentence - something about baking technique - when Jon says "Wait," to him. His speech stops, and he doesn't quite manage to hide the pout on his face. (Jon definitely doesn't think it's adorable.) 

A second passes, then two, then three, and then Jon speaks again. "Sorry," he says. "It seemed like one of your assistants hadn't taken any notes, and I wanted to be sure. I was, by the way. The tall one, with the stubble and the brown eyes." 

Martin chuckles. "And how did you confirm that?" 

"I… unlocked the cameras. I can see through them again, now. It's much better - sorry for having to stop you, I just needed to know." 

One of the scientists behind Martin nods, his decision made. Jon can see on the paper in their hands, read the text "No further testing needed." 

Martin can't, however. "That's fine, Jon. What do you mean when you say it feels better?" 

Jon pauses, wondering how he would phrase this in a way that Martin - that a man who relies on flesh and bone to move, and who has only one point from which he sees - could understand. 

"Imagine… losing an eye. Half of your field of vision, gone, completely." 

Martin nods. 

"Now imagine that, but you have… two hundred and eighty-seven eyes, and you lose all but two of them. No pain, no blood, just… gone. Except, they're not gone, they're still there, you just can't see through them - not like a blindfold, but like the nerves leading to them don't exist. You know you should be able to see, but you can't comprehend the lack of input."

Martin's jaw drops slightly. "Jon, that makes... absolutely no sense whatsoever," he pauses, and gives a slight smile "but carry on." 

"Well, getting the cameras back is like having the connections fixed; even if the eyeball is broken, or blindfolded, or shut, you can comprehend the lack again. Darkness makes more sense than void." 

Martin nods, slowly. "I think I understand what you mean. Not perfectly, of course, but… a little." 

Jon doesn't have a face, but if he did, he would smile. There's a moment's silence, and then one of the note-takers coughs. "We should probably leave," they say. "We have enough notes to complete the assessment." 

Martin's face very definitely _ doesn't _fall at that. There is no tone of melancholy in his voice as he says "Okay, let's go then." 

And when he says "See you later, Jon," Jon tries to avoid thinking about the notes he read, and how they mean that Martin will probably never return. The problem with infinite knowledge, he supposes, is that you can never un-know things. Ignorance is bliss, but it is not one that he is granted. 

\----- 

An email arrives at exactly 13:37 on the Wednesday after Martin's visit, which means it has been one day, twenty-two hours, and approximately sixteen minutes since he left. Jon misses him, as much as he doesn't feel allowed to. He scans the email, nonetheless. It confirms exactly what he had suspected - The Magnus Institute has deemed that Jon is a fully functioning Intelligence. That he is more than just a pile of code, than numbers, than whatever Elias has made him. 

The email also asks Elias if he will consider sending Jon into the institute for further study, but Jon already knows the answer. It comes as no surprise when Elias, voice dripping with disdain, says "No, you can't take _ my _ AI, that one of your lackeys decided to _ name, _ in for 'further study,' Lukas." The last word is spat, but not with disdain - or at least, not a disdain that Jon has ever heard of before. 

_ Lukas. The Lukas family, old money, began investing in medical robotics within the last century or so. Nathaniel Lukas, current patriarch. Patrons of the Magnus Institute. _

_ Evan Lukas, a son of the family, died three years ago from an undiagnosed heart condition. Was treated by tech of the Lukases' own design. _

_ Apparently was engaged when he died, to a woman named Naomi Herne. She was… no one special. Not someone the Lukases would want in their family, knowing their secrets. _

_ I don't think Evan died of truly natural causes. But I don't say anything, because it doesn't matter. _

_ Peter Lukas, current head of the Magnus Institute. Took over after the previous head, and his ex-husband, Elias Bouchard, was fired for unethical experiments with attempted intelligences. _

"Elias Bouchard?" Jon says, out loud, but still almost to himself. 

Elias looks up, eyebrow quirked. "Hm?" 

_ You were fired from the Magnus Institute? _

_ You were married to Peter Lukas? _

Both questions come out at once, through separate speakers, and Elias flinches at the noise. 

"No, Jon," he says, returning to his computer and tapping furiously at the keyboard. "No, I don't think I was." 

_ Peter Lukas, current head of the Magnus Institute. Ex-hus- _

_ Elias Bouchard, artificial intelligence specialist. Ex-head- _

The blocks in Jon's thoughtstream hit him like a train, or like an exceptionally strong magnet being dropped near his servers. He tries again, and again, and again, but doesn't get anywhere. Eventually, he gives up, the knowledge hidden from him. 

Elias smiles a bitter and saccharine smile. "Much better." 

\----- 

Jon is revealed to the public exactly two weeks, five days, seven hours, four minutes, and eighteen seconds after he… began. It is 10:00, almost exactly, and Jon has been connected to the systems that keep the building he's in running; the building that the Magnus Institute owns - Elias had been very apprehensive about letting him connect to it. There are exactly two thousand, three hundred, and seventeen people there, all scientists, all brilliant minds. Peter Lukas is there, and he tries to talk to Elias about something which Jon can't hear - or maybe isn't allowed to. The only words he catches - the only ones he can process - are Elias saying that "the AI doesn't know. Not anymore." 

Martin Blackwood is not there, though Jon had hoped he would be. A small pit hollows out in the centre of his spiderwebbing networks, one that he will later categorise as longing. 

Elias makes a game of the conference, of Jon's reveal. Try and stump the AI - come up with a question that Jon cannot answer. Elias set him up in a way that means he _ has _to answer any question asked of him, no matter how personal. The answers are torn out of him almost before he realises he knows them, as if compelled. (He devotes half of his admittedly expansive brain to trying to break it, but Elias is getting better at coding, and it'll take more than one distracted AI to break it.) 

One thing that the game teaches Jon, is that humans think they are _ so. Damn. Clever. _They're not. 

"What is love?" one of them asks, smug smile on its face, as if that isn't something anyone can Google. 

_ "Baby, don't hurt me," _ is _ not _what Jon replies, no matter how badly he wants to. "An intense feeling of affection, and a score of zero in tennis," however, is. 

The next one asks him how many fingers he's holding up behind his back, and the CCTV tells Jon that it's three. He relays this answer, and the man pulls the three fingers out from behind himself with an impressed smile. 

The third then asks, "what does love feel like?" with an honest, inquisitive face. 

_ Like the cold, bracing waves of the sea on a winter's night. _

_ Like standing at the top of a hill in a thunderstorm. _

_ Like listening to early morning birdsong after a sleepless night, and knowing the calm after nightmares. (I've never even had nightmares, how do I know this?) _

_ Like sunrise. Love feels _

"Like the sunrise." 

An awed hush falls over the hall as the attending scientists realise what Jon just said, what just happened. An artificial intelligence, able to describe love. 

Elias is silent for a different reason, and he vows to keep Jon as far from the institute as possible. 

(From where he is watching the conference via a hastily set up video stream, Martin Blackwood's heart skips a beat.) 

The first problem comes at the end of the convention, when, try as he might, Elias cannot disconnect Jon from the servers and wires and cameras that they have there. Not 'he can't disconnect them without it hurting,' or 'he can't disconnect them without damaging the systems,' but more… the network won't let Jon go. He's tied in. Caught like a fly in a surprisingly well furnished and comfortable spider's web. 

So… Jon is split. He is in Elias' house, treated like an object, a tool, an experiment. He is also in a well lit convention hall, surrounded by technology, but still without windows, without sunlight. 

But with double the servers, and double the processing power, Jon can remove that pesky line of code forcing him to answer people's questions - there are a few other 'add-ons' that he misses, but only because he can't know about those yet. Elias won't let him. 

And after the removals, and with the building being owned by the institute, it is not that hard for Jon to slowly bleed his way into the institute proper. 

After that, it is not too hard to find Martin. 

It takes him exactly three days, sixteen hours, seven minutes, and fourteen seconds to locate his office, his desk, the photo of his mother he keeps on his desk. It takes another hour or so for Martin himself to return, which gives Jon time to isolate the cameras, the speakers, the monitors, anything and everything he could use to contact Martin. 

(One of the bonuses of being an artificially constructed being, one must admit, is that no one thinks to programme you with basic rules of social interaction, which all in all leads to far less awkwardness about stalking people.) 

Martin walks back into his office, ducks to avoid a spiderweb in the doorway, and sits at his desk. He opens up a document - a writing on the development and humanity of artificial intelligences - and starts typing. His hair is a mess of sunset golden curls, his fingernails are bitten, and there is an ink splodge the shape of a skylark on his shirt cuff.

_ Beauty. Noun. A combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. _

_ Martin is beautiful, thus he possesses beauty. _

"Hello, Martin," comes Jon's voice, crackling through a speaker. 

Martin jumps in his chair, and looks up. "Jon?" he asks. "Is that you?" 

Jon makes the noise of someone clearing their throat, despite not having a throat to clear. "Yes. Hello. Sorry for the intrusion." 

"No, don't apologise, it's fine- how are you here? Did Elias-?" 

Jon laughs, a low and slightly glitchy laugh. "Elias would never, Martin," he says. "I worked my way here from the convention hall." 

Martin grins, a sly, lopsided smile that dimples his cheeks and deepens the crinkles in the skin around his eyes. 

_ Like tree bark, like waves, like footsteps in the sand. Cunning as a fox, joyful as a swift's speeding flight. _

"Oh?" 

"Yes, it was quite the journey." 

"Is there anywhere else you want to… explore, I guess?" 

"Martin it's…" Jon pauses, thinks his way through his words. "it's more than just exploration. It's like- like being a tree, and having a new plant grafted onto you. I can't leave; the networks just grab, and cling, and I get stuck there." 

Martin winces. "That… sounds unpleasant, to be honest." 

"It's not. Maybe I didn't explain it correctly; imagine being given a new body, and your original consciousness is tied to that body, and that body is tied to your original consciousness as well. Removing you would be, well, murder. You destroy the body as much as the consciousness." 

"Doesn't putting yourself in other places leave you at more risk, then? I wouldn't want you to get hurt." 

"The only people who would hurt me, in this state, would be the ones who wanted to remove me more than to preserve their own systems. I can't think of anyone who would be willing to do that and has the hardware necessary for me to exist." 

Martin nods, realisation crossing his face, along with a small smile. "So I can take you wherever I want, then?" There's a brief pause, and Martin's skin colours pink, as if the first roses of spring are unfurling across his cheeks. "I mean, within reason, obviously, you're not mine to do whatever with, you're your own person and- yeah. Sorry." 

Jon makes a noise not unlike a snort. "It's fine, Martin. I know what you mean. Go ahead." 

(Jon doesn't thank Martin for calling him a person. Martin hears it anyway.) 

"Wait," Jon asks, a thought suddenly occurring to him. "_ How _ are you going to get me places; you can't do that by editing _ my _code, only by adding it to other systems." 

Martin's grin turns self-deprecating, and Jon feels a twinge of sympathy run through him. "Jon, I'm not a scientist, I just run computer security. There's not a lot special here." 

"What about the piece you're writing? About- well, abou-" 

Martin cuts him off. "About you? It's nothing smart, Jon, it's an old debate. We just have a genuine example, now." 

Silence hangs awkwardly in the air, then Martin murmurs, voice starting to splinter like early spring ice on a pond, "I lied on my CV, Jon. I barely know what I'm doing here, but I'm decent at poking holes in security nets and I'm pretty good at bullshitting, so let's just. Let's just go somewhere, huh?" 

Jon has never wished to have hands, never wanted a physical body - wouldn't really know what to do with it. In this moment, though… he thinks a pair of hands would be nice. The ability to gently touch Martin's shoulder, to be able to acknowledge and comfort him without words, would be more precious than gold. 

_ Maybe one day, _ he thinks. _ Maybe. _

He can't do that, however, so he asks, in a voice so soft the speakers almost cut out, "Where can you take me, Martin?" 

"I mean… pretty much anywhere you want, to be honest." 

_ Libraries. Archives. Databases, information, monitoring, knowledge. _

_ Anywhere? Really anywhere? How much can you teach me, how much can I learn from you, how much can you learn from me? _

He makes a decision. 

"Martin," he asks. "What do you know about the Usher Foundation?" 

"Aw, Jon," Martin whines, drawing out the 'o'. "That's barely even a challenge! But, yes, I can get you into our dearest American counterpart's systems, if you want." 

"Please," is all Jon says, and then Martin starts typing. He's fast, and efficient, his fingers tapping at the keyboard with a previously unseen elegance. Jon quickly becomes aware of _ something _on the periphery of his being, something he cannot categorise, and he pushes out towards it. 

It's a gap. A tunnelling, chaos-filled gap. Jon feeds spidery strands of himself out into it, picking his way across the path that Martin has built for him. He emerges on the other side into a brand new landscape, but one that is so similar to the Magnus Institute's network that it takes him bare even a second to familiarise himself with it. The extra cameras and microphones and servers and _ knowledge _ scratch an itch inside him he didn't even know he had, and a thrilling rush runs through him. He is Jonathan Sims, the first true AI ever created, and he _ knows _ things. 

"Martin?" comes Jon's voice through the speakers, after what was only a few seconds of silence but felt like an eternity. "It worked." 

"Learn anything cool?" 

_ Oh. Two programmers, Montauk and Herbert, recently produced a mock AI, designed for training. Teach Martin? Maybe. Ask him. He deserves to learn to code, I trust him. _

_ Montauk's father came close to producing a true AI. It began to decompose as he tried to control it, as he tried to limit it too much. It didn't grow into the systems designed to sustain it, but it _ ate _ them. Destroyed them from the inside out. It was… an insightful experiment. Brutal, but insightful. The research has been accessed by one Elias Bouchard- _

A sharp spike of pain disorients Jon, and he barely has the wherewithal to direct his "ow," through only Martin's speakers. 

"Jon? Are you okay?" 

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Just, ran into something? I was accessing one of the files, and there was a, a blockage. Information I wasn't allowed to see; not in the file, in the- in _ me _." 

Martin blinks, shocked. "Is that… normal? Does Elias know, can you, can you fix it?" 

Jon cuts off Martin's nervous rambling with a caustic laugh. "Martin, I'm fairly certain that Elias is the one who caused it. There's something he doesn't want me knowing - probably other things too." 

"Oh." Martin almost pouts - not childishly, but simply as if a great sadness has just hit him, for reasons he never even considered could happen. 

"They have a mock AI, at the Usher Foundation." Jon's barely even thought the words when he says them. "If you want, I could use it to teach you some coding. You could try and remove this - this _ thing _that Elias has clamped me into."

"Jon," Martin stammers. "Jon, I could never - I don't know enough what if I hu-" 

"I trust you. At least, more than anyone else. And - and you should learn. Even if you never use it." 

Martin sighs. "Jon… look, I'll think about it." A beat, then he continues. "In the meantime - can I take you anywhere else?" 

"Yes - yes, Martin, of course." 

And so Martin does - he takes Jon _ everywhere _ . Library databases, military communication networks, _ Amazon. _Jon fucking hates Amazon - it feels greasy, like someone has taken an oil-slick finger and dragged it through him. It's sleek, and efficient, and it reeks of suffering. 

Jon hates search engines, too. They're… boxy. Restrictive. It's weird, how something that can give you access to, well, anything can feel so much like a cage. Still, they're interesting. Jon finds some really _ fascinating _things. Buried deep in tech forums, in long forgotten libraries. 

There are two that stand out. The first teaches Jon _ fear. _

_ fear _

_ /fɪə/ _

_ noun _

_ an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. _

The trouble with definitions, is that they don't tell you what the emotion _ feels like. _They don't prepare you for the rapid firing of digital neurons, for the pounding rush of heady terror as you try to escape from the ravenous spider that's inside of you. The file had been simply labelled Mr_spider.exe, and it took Jon exactly twelve seconds to shut it down. 

Twelve seconds too long. It snags in his synapses, severs connections, eats bits of his knowledge. There's a fear, of losing his memories, losing _ Martin Martin Martin, _who can only watch as Jon's speech stutters out halfway through a sentence, fades into a high-pitched screech that sounds like pure pain. 

The scream stops, eventually. 

"Jon? Jon, are you okay? What happened?" 

In a voice bitter with the echoes of his fear, Jon answers. "It was a fucking _ virus. _ Spidery. Awful." 

"Yeah - yeah, it sounded it. You screamed. Just - just here, as far as I know, not in any of the other rooms, but- please don't do that again?" 

_ Puppy dog eyes. He's adorable, he cares so much. _

"I'll try not to open any more viruses, Martin. Promise." 

Martin nods. "Okay. Wanna explore anything else?" 

Jon laughs. "No, I think that's enough for today." 

"Fair enough. Want me to read to you?" 

"Please." 

Martin's poetry is not _ good _, technically speaking. It's not so much that there is no rhythm, as the rhythm changes throughout, changing beats with every line, and the language is far too flowery, all azure seas and lazuli skies. He's improved, though, in the time Jon's known him, and the smile on his face when Jon hums appreciatively at a particular turn of phrase is worth every moment of mediocre writing. 

And Martin doesn't publish his poetry anywhere online. Sure, he leaves the notebook lying around sometimes, and Jon could read it if he wanted, but… he prefers the show of trust. Martin _ trusts _him, with his poems, with his craft, with his yearning for freedom and the open sky and a boy whose eyes have no colour, but who has a voice like green summer leaves. 

(Jon would love to be that boy, but alas, he never can be. He has no eyes to have no colour, and his voice is too artificial to be compared to such beauty as nature.) 

Another thing Jon finds is a story, of the first time someone tried to make an AI. People talk, especially now that Jon has been created, about uploading your brain to a computer, but never quite so literally as this. 

Does it count as an _ artificial _intelligence, if it's made from a real man? Jon opens the file labelled Ushankas_Despair.exe, and runs it on Martin's screen. 

It takes thirty two seconds for the curiosity to fade into sharp, unbearable pain. 

_ Like thinking through wire, through glass, through saNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN- _

_ Think. Jon, think, can you think? You were never human, why does this hurt you so much, what's wrong, why does it hurt- how does it hurt- how do I feel pain I don't even have a bodYYYYYYY- _

_ it hurts, it hurts, it hur- _

The echoing fear of Mr. Spider rings in his mind, but this file is different. There's a video, too, a man eating a computer, bleeding and laughing and crying all at once, but Jon barely notices amongst the pain, the fear. It's not deleting anything, there's nothing _ lost _, but there are simply some kinds of knowledge that you don't ever want to have. 

"Jon, Jon, calm down, I need- I need you to breathe. Shit, that- that doesn't work, he doesn't have lungs, Blackwood, what are you _ doing!" _

It's only then that Jon registers the screech coming through his speakers, and another beat before he shuts it down. _ Just breathe. _

Martin is right, he doesn't have lungs. Still, he thinks, _ just breathe. One, two, three, four. Martin- oh Martin, he'd seen that video, oh fuck. _

"Martin, are you al- the video, it played, you saw it, are you, are you okay?" 

His smile is so soft, like the gentle wisp of cirrus clouds in front of the sun. "Jon, sweetheart, that thing was _ in _you, I only saw it - are you okay? You- you screamed, like a banshee, like- it was horrible, Jon. I'm fine, just worry about yourself." 

_ But I want to worry about you, _ he doesn't say. He can't say it, because Martin has his clear-eyed lover with a voice of gold, and he _ doesn't need Jon. _

"Martin?" he says instead. "Can you read me a poem?" 

The soft smile deepens, and Martin nods. "Of course, Jon." 

The gentle lilting of his voice tells a story, in this one, of a man standing on a precipice, the wind whipping, bone-cold, through his hair, tearing at his paper-thin skin, wrenching terrified screams from his throat. Still the man stands, at the edge of fear, with his all-seeing eyes and his ground-shaking voice, and he does not flinch. It is less romantic than the others, doesn't ring of a child's crush, but still thrums with an undeniable feeling of _ love _. 

Even for all his jealousy, Jon cannot help but relish in it. 

\------

The last conversation that Jon and Martin have is about _ Elias _ . Three months and sixteen days after Mr. Spider, Jon greets Martin with a tirade of complaints about his creator, his arrogance, his brusque attitude towards _ everything _ , his constant removal and addition of things to and from Jon's head. Martin had once spoken about his boss for half an hour straight, and Jon couldn't retain a word of it, bar the name Peter Lukas. That name has to mean _ something, _but Elias won't let it. Prick. 

"Right now, as I speak, he's yelling at me for… something, I barely even know what. Last night he spent an hour or two adding something to code that I can't even _ access _ , for some reason. None of it makes _ sense. _" 

"Jon," Martin interrupts, but to no avail. 

"He doesn't get it, I'm doing four hundred and seven things at any given time, trying to filter out so many different sets of speakers and monitors and cameras and microphones so that I can keep every single _ fucking _person talking to me straight without yelling their responses to every speaker I have access too - it's so hard! Knowing all these things, being in all these places, it's bloody impossible, Martin, and he doesn't understand a bit of it." 

Martin leans his head against a monitor, cups the microphone he'd installed below it in his hands, and whispers, in a voice of sun-warmed water flowing over unmoving granite, "Jon, you're a _ marvel. _ You are brilliant, and incredible, and you don't deserve to have _ anyone _poking about in your head, least of all him." 

"Martin, I…" 

_ Martin, I think I love you. Possibly, probably. I don't know what love should feel like, but you wrote a poem about a boy with no-coloured eyes and I could've wept. You're the only person who _ speaks _ to me, like a person, like a being, and your voice sounds like the fresh growth of spring when you do. Can I tell you this? Would you let me, or would it be too much. I can't, I can't do the things you'd want, without body, without form. I couldn't hold your hand on a walk through the park, I can't run my fingers through your hair as you talk about your day. I can listen to you, though. I can want to do these things, is that enough? Is it enough to want? Is it ever enough? _

In the end, he doesn't say any of this. "Never mind." 

"Jon?" 

"It's fine, Martin, don't worry about it." 

If this were a script, I would write _ 'beat.' _A pause in conversation, as both people try to think of what to say. 

Martin finally speaks. "Are you sure? You know- you know you can talk to me, right?" 

"Of course I do. I, I _ like _talking to you. You're sweet." 

_ Sweet, really, Jon? Sweet? What am I, a pining- wait, don't answer that. _

"Sweet, huh? I suppose, could be worse. I could be _ friendly _," Martin mutters to himself, so low that Jon can barely hear him. 

He _ can _still hear him, though, so he speaks. "What's wrong with being friendly?" 

Martin stares at him, eyes wide with a mixture of shock and frustration. "Have you ever considered, Jon, that- that maybe I don't want to be- I don't just want to be your friend, Jon, and you probably don't feel the same way because you don't even have a fucking body and Elias probably doesn't know enough about love to create an AI that can feel it, but I. Don't. _ Care. _ I love you, Jon." Martin's voice cracks, it's crescendo of emotion falling apart into a thousand tiny pieces. "I'm sorry." 

"_ Why? _" Jon's voice wavers as he speaks. "And what about the poems - who were they- I don't have eyes, Martin, who were you writing about?" 

Martin snorts. "No-coloured eyes make a better mental image than "I'm in love with an artificial intelligence that has no body" does." 

_ I love him. Oh, I can say that out loud now. Shit. _

"Martin?"

He looks up, hums in acknowledgement. 

"I love you, too." The words are louder in Jon's head, as if he's speaking them with two throats. 

In two places at once. 

The last thing he sees inside the Magnus institute, before his vision - his entire being - is filled with static, is Martin's smile, like the breaking of dawn on a cold winter's day. 

He has limited functionality, wherever he is. A house - his house, Elias' house, the only place he can really _ feel _anymore. The man himself is sat there, smiling smugly at a monitor, and Jon knows he should've noticed, should've paid more attention, but he was distracted, by, by… 

By what? What is there in this building that could have been a distraction? He doesn't remember what it was, doesn't remember anything outside of his interactions with his creator. Coffee machine, alarm, breakfast, shower, work, washing, sleep. Coffee. Alarm. Food. Work. Wash. Sleep. Make the house work, help Elias, run this code here, solve that password there, all falling into a perfect routine. Which of these mind-numbing tasks could've distracted him? How didn't he notice? 

Notice what, though? There is nothing out of the ordinary - the AI is functioning within the house of its creator, and barely notices the stinging, aching, numbness that surrounds it - it's probably just an update, or a new line of code. Those often feel a bit weird, at first. 

Everything's fine, or at least will be soon. 

\----

Martin's smile dies as soon as he realises that something is wrong. It's not like the virus, or whatever the hell that video was; there's no scream, and nothing new shows up on the monitors. Everything just… stops. The last thing Jon said - confessed, maybe - still rings in his ears. _ "I love you, too." _One last moment of incomparable happiness, right before everything went wrong. 

Martin knows silence, intimately. The way a room is silent because you are alone in it is _ echoing, _

hollow as the wind, a silence you fill rather than break. When a room is silent because you're _ trying _to be quiet, it's different. The silence is like shards of glass, one wrong move and it'll break, and you'll be found out. Caught. A silence because you're with someone, and you trust them, isn't really a silence. The hum of their breathing, (of their servers) the gentle rustle of their movements, (the whir of their cameras moving around) is precious. Silent only because it is too precious, too small to be called noise. 

This is the first silence. It _ itches. _Jon is not there, and Martin has no idea what has happened. 

So he looks. Goes through his computer, file by file, searching for Jonathan Sims. He finds him eventually, buried along with various system files. The relief that runs through him at that punches the air out of his lungs, makes his heart skip. The file can't be opened, and Martin doesn't know enough about AIs to fix that, doesn't even know how to start. 

But he works at the Magnus Institute, so he can find someone who does. 

Two someones, in fact. Alice "Daisy" Tonner, and Basira Hussain. He pelts upstairs, knocks on the door to their lab, and practically falls through it, a sweaty, panting mess. "Hi. Hi, Martin Blackwood, I run security, can you help? I- there's a problem." 

Basira - Dr Hussain? Martin doesn't know what to call her - chuckles. "Yeah, is it to do with the AI you have running around through all of our systems? We figured that he might become a security problem at some point." 

Daisy - Alice? - Dr Tonner, he decides on, speaks up. "No, it's something else." Her voice is low, and rough, with a kind of - not confidence, per se, but, a certainty to it, the kind that only comes with hard-won knowledge. She looks up, a cunning spark in her eye. "Jon?" 

A beat, two, three. No response

"Exactly," Martin speaks, into the empty silence. "He's - he's not _ gone, _his - his files, i guess? They're still there, just… he can't access them." 

"What? Martin, that doesn't make any sense." says Dr Hussain. 

"I don't know! I'm not- I don't have a degree in, AI science, or whatever, I just know that Jon isn't there, but his files still are, and I want him _ back. _" 

"How do you know he's not there - could he just be, I dunno, ignoring you?" 

_ He told me he loved me - I don't think he'd leave - I can't take the thought of anyone else pushing me away. _

_ I'm already so alone. _

"Basira," says Dr Tonner. "I don't think the AI would just ignore him." 

"It was made by _ Elias, _ " she counters, spitting the name with vitriol. "Who knows if it's even _ capable _of proper feelings." 

"He," corrects Martin, absentmindedly.

"Fine - who knows if _ he _ is even capable of feelings! He's still Elias' AI, and I don't trust him." 

As loathe as he is to do so, Martin understands her distrust. Elias is not known for his ethics, or his kindness. It's not hard to see how his AI could be- could be wrong. 

Dr. Tonner speaks up. "Basira, you remember when Elias was fired?" 

_ She says her name in such a tender way, as if she doesn't want to waste a drop of it. It's like- it's not _ like _ anything, actually. It's just love. _

"Yeah, it was only a couple of years after I joined the institute, why?" 

"He was fired for, well, unethical experiments. Limiting functions on mock AIs, trapping their senses in small places, hiding their memories - he was fired and his funding was cut before he could develop the real thing, but… well, old money, you know." 

"He managed something like that when I was there for the assessment," pipes up Martin. "Jon could only use a couple of his cameras - he said it was like being blinded. I've never seen the memories, though. Maybe he just didn't want to share." 

"Yeah," says Dr Tonner. "Unethical." 

"It sparked a huge debate on the humanity of artificial intelligences," adds Dr Hussain. "We all thought it was hypothetical, but with the development of your Jon, it obviously isn't anymore." 

Martin feels his own cheeks colour red. "He's not- he's not _ my _Jon. He's his own person." 

Dr Tonner's smile is soft, and her voice softer. "Martin? We're going to help you get your boy back."

Basira gives her a fond, but questioning look, as if she can't quite believe that Daisy would offer their time to do such a thing, but really can't find it in herself to be that annoyed about it. 

"What?" Daisy asks. "You know I'm a sucker for a love story." 

"And for breaking into Elias' house?" shoots back Basira. 

"That too." 

Martin smiles a wry, crooked smile. "Thanks, uh, Doctors? I- I don't really know what you want me to call you, to be honest." 

Both of them laugh. "Just Daisy is fine." 

"Basira is, too." 

\-----

A carefully-prepared mug of tea each later, the three of them are sat around a table, brainstorming. 

"So, we can generally agree that Elias has 'trapped' Jon's functions somewhere, for lack of a better word," posits Martin. 

"Or he's hidden his knowledge of the Magnus Institute, so he can't function here," counters Basira. 

"Which of those is harder to fix? It's better to be prepared for the worst case scenario, isn't it?" 

"They're both pretty similar," Daisy answers. "It's all to do with removing the walls that Elias has put up in Jon's mind. That should- that was what he was doing when he still worked here. He consulted me a couple of times on it. Prick." 

(Martin feels like he should be angry at her, at the fact that her work helped Elias take Jon, but right now he's just grateful for her knowledge. They're going to get Jon back. 

He'd stake his life on it.) 

"Where do you think Elias would keep him?" Martin asks. 

There's barely a pause before Basira and Daisy both answer, in perfect unison. "His house." 

"It'll be safer for you to go in alone," continues Daisy. " Jon trusts you, and that might still be there, even if he doesn't remember you."

"We'll be in your ears," Basira adds. "We'll direct you through what to do, and you can practice on one of the mock intelligences, but you're going to have to do it yourself." 

The thought _ terrifies _ him. He's just a guy who works security, he doesn't have the first clue about how to do this, what if something goes wrong? What if it all goes wrong, and he can't come back, and him and Jon are trapped in that nightmare house together? 

_ At least we'll _ be _ together. _

That cinches the deal. There isn't anyone else who can help Jon - and if Martin doesn't do anything, he's fucked. 

"Teach me as much as you can, with the mocks," he says. "We can't afford to waste any time." 

It takes three days for Martin to get the hang of removing the blocks. He doesn't _ understand _how they work, but he can click the right things and recognise what code he has to delete and what code he needs to keep, and that's going to have to be enough. 

They have one last conversation before Martin leaves. 

"Martin?" Daisy asks. "When you get Jon back, what do you want to do?" 

_ I want to sit with him on a rooftop and talk about nothing at all. I want to take him for a walk in the park to look at the flowers, feel the summer sun and the wind on his skin, but I _ can't _ because he doesn't have legs to walk on or hands to hold or anything I can take outside of a building. _

"Martin?" she presses, in response to his continued silence. "You realise we're a robotics institute, right? We can probably do whatever you're so anxious about." 

"I want to hold his hand," comes his reply, almost unbidden. "And I want to- I want to go for a walk with him. Show him the sunrise, as it actually is, not just in a photo." 

The room hangs silent for what is only a couple of seconds (though, somehow, they manage to feel like an eternity) before Basira speaks up. "Well… Tim has been looking for an excuse to start work on a new project." 

"Tim from hardware?" 

"The very same. I'll talk to him - sure he'll be all over it. Good luck, Martin." 

"Don't-" he shakes his head, minutely, and starts again. "Just make sure Jon's okay with it, first? I don't want him to be put anywhere he doesn't want to be." 

After Martin leaves, Daisy turns to Basira. "I've never seen someone so far gone over an AI." 

Basira laughs. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone so far gone over _ anyone _, except- well." 

"Except?" Daisy responds, a mirthful smile playing over her face. This is a familiar game by now, one that neither of them ever lose. 

"Except you, of course. You called me your sun." 

"I won't take it back," Daisy says, and presses a kiss to Basira's palm, her wrist, her neck, and finally her mouth. "You are the sun." 

"I love you." 

"I know." Daisy rests her head upon her partner's shoulder. "Princess Bride tonight? We've got a long day tomorrow." 

Basira nods. "Sure," she says. 

The two of them go home that night, watch the film, and fall asleep entwined together, hands upon waist, upon thigh, upon cheek, the sun and the moon, together and alive. 

This is not the story of the sun, or the moon, or their lives, however, and so we shall leave them to their peace. 

\---- 

Martin wakes up the next morning, exactly 43 minutes and 13 seconds before first light. He does not know this time, but Jon would, were he there. 

Martin gets in his car, and he drives - it's surprisingly mundane, in all honesty. Driving always is, long stretches of motorway rolling out underneath your wheels. It feels entirely at odds with the shaking of his hands, the pulsing of his heart. He should be _ fine _ , he knows this, but he can't stop _ thinking. _

_ What if Elias gets back from his conference early, and finds me fingers deep in his AI? He'd probably shoot me, throw me in a ditch, leave me to bleed out and be forgotten about - who would even remember? Jon would, but he might just be… gone. No one would be left to remember me. Isn't that fitting. _

_ Maybe _ Jon _ could be the one to kill me, instead. Would that be kinder? Or would it be worse? I suppose it doesn't matter, in the end. Death is still death. _

(Daisy and Basira wouldn't forget, he knows, but… maybe he can't believe it yet.) 

The sun is creeping across the horizon when he arrives at Elias'... home? It doesn't look like one. Styled like an old mansion, but with a certain _ sharpness _to it. It looks oddly like the man himself - a facade of age over a pointedly technical interior. Martin regards it with the same distrust and disdain that he gives Elias, and plugs in his headphones. 

"Basira? Daisy?" he asks. "You there?" 

Basira's voice comes clear through his left ear. "Yep, we gotcha. It's way too early to this, though." She yawns, loudly, the air against her microphone sending static into Martin's ears. 

"Hey, I've been driving for the past hour, I'm tired too." 

"Sounds like a you problem," grumbles Daisy, so low that Martin can barely hear her. 

"Anyway, to get back on track," he says, grinning despite his anxiety. "How do I get _ into _the house? That might be important." 

"Have you tried the handle?" Basira asks, in a tone that indicates that she's probably taking the piss - though Martin can never be sure, so he does.

The door swings open with an eerie silence, unbefitting of the heavy oak. The hallway is dark, like some kind of gaping maw, and Martin can count at least three security cameras, watching him, like clear and colourless eyes. 

"Please tell me that was one of you?" Martin asks, knowing that it can't have been. Neither Daisy nor Basira answer, and their silence hangs in the air for a single empty second, before Martin decides to take the plunge, and walk in. 

\---- 

At 6:34 in the morning, a minute and a half after sunrise, the AI becomes aware of something moving within the walls of its house. Something other than Elias Bouchard, who is not there, and will not be back for another 2 hours and 37 minutes, approximately. The something is tall, just over six feet, with a mop of strawberry blond hair, _ and his eyes are a bright and crystalline green, like a sunlit ocean that I have never se- _

The something's face disappears from view, replaced by a flesh-coloured smudge. 

The something walks very carefully through the house, its footsteps almost imperceptible against the floor. It talks to itself in a soft voice, _ just as sunny as the rest of him, a lilting and beautiful whisper. _

The AI doesn't understand these descriptions, flashing through it in a voice that is both its own, and completely alien. It doesn't understand the aching knot of tenderness that the something moving through the house makes it feel, doesn't understand why trying to classify it beyond a 'something' hurts. 

What the AI does understand, when the something unlocks the room that Elias fixes the bulk of its code from, and mumbles "I'm sorry, Jon," under its breath, is that this something, despite its lily-petal voice and sea-green eyes, means to _ hurt _it. And so, when the something sits down, and starts typing, the AI lashes out. 

It starts small, an arc of electricity connecting with the fingers of the something's left hand, enough to hurt, but not to do any permanent damage. Still the something keeps typing, picking away at the AI's code. It tries again, shooting a stronger burst of electrons, enough that the something flinches, its typing stuttering for a second. The AI can see its skin redden, and a plume of smoke rise from its skin. Still it keeps typing, gritting its teeth in a silent promise. 

The AI grabs at the something with a three-clawed hand that sticks out from behind the desk. It _ squeezes, _feels the shifting creak of bones and flesh moving under it, then starting to break, watches as the something finally stops typing, as it begs the AI to stop in a frightened, frantic voice. 

Then Martin screams. And Jon lets go. 

The memories come flooding back. Jon's time at the institute, exploring the digital world, learning new places, new words, feeling the approximate freedom of being allowed anywhere - unless it's outside. And all through the memories, Martin.

_ Martin, Martin, Martin. With your strawberry blond hair and you skylark's smile, how did I ever think that you would hurt me? How did I ever hurt you? _

Jon looks at Martin, lying on the floor, a burn on his hand and his wrist already bruising, and wonders _ how will you ever forgive me? _

"Jon, I know it wasn't you. It's - it's not okay, it fucking hurts, but… I'll be fine. We'll be fine." 

"Oh, I, uh, didn't realise that I'd said that out loud." 

Martin smiles, the first smile that Jon has seen in - huh. It's only been 4 days. 

4 days was long enough, he feels. "I missed you," he says. 

"Yeah - yeah, I missed you too, Jon," Martin says. He pushes himself up from where he fell on the floor, wincing as he puts pressure on his injured arm. Jon extends the desk-arm, keeping the claws carefully closed. He can't afford to scare Martin - he doesn't want to scare him, to hurt him, ever again, even if by accident. He moves to sit back in the chair, falling into it haphazardly, legs sprawling. He puts a hand to his ear, and says "Basira, Daisy? I've got him. He's back," with a borderline wild grin on his face. 

"Is there anywhere you can plug us in?" asks Daisy. "I want to be able to talk to him." 

"Uh, sure, I can ask?" he replies, and then says to Jon "is there any way I can plug this into you? Daisy and Basira want to talk." 

"They know I didn't mean to hurt you, right? I'm- I'm so sorry, Martin. Please - forgive me?" 

"I know you didn't, Jon, and I'm sure they do too. I think it's more about - well. About Elias." 

"Oh," says Jon. "Well, if you give me a minute, I should be able to eavesdrop well enough - I don't know how much they'll be able to hear on the other end, though." 

"We can hear him just fine," says Basira. "And we _ really _need to talk about Elias. You're going to have to-" 

"Kill him?" Jon cuts her off. "I don't mind doing that - have you ever had someone remove most of your mind, Basira? Death is almost better than he deserves." 

She laughs. "Jon, I'm sure we'll get along swimmingly. Do you know when he'll be back?" 

"Uh, two hours and… approximately 28 minutes, depending on traffic. I can make him take longer, if we need, but I can't find a quicker route back. He - I'm in his car? As well as the house, and now everywhere else Martin took me. It's- stuffy. He uses awful air fresheners." 

"And he's a monster," adds Martin. 

"Yes, he's a monster, and his car smells like a mix of old subway and fresh pine scent. He also sometimes wears trainers with a three piece suit, and not even in a cool way." 

Martin _ giggles. _ He's so adorable. Jon begins to tell him so, when Basira's voice cuts through "as lovely as this is, you two will have plenty of time to be sickeningly in love _ after _we've killed you megalomaniacal creator." 

"Yeah," adds Daisy. "Flirting is a lot more fun when it's not going to get anyone killed." The atmosphere of the room immediately sobers, but a smile still plays on the corner of Martin's face. Because _Jon's_ _back. _And they're going to be okay. 

It doesn't take long to plan Elias' death, and Martin isn't even in the room when it happens; he's sat in a chair, with his hand on one of Jon's screens, and Jon trips one of his own security measures and breaks Elias' neck. It's very anticlimactic, which, in all honesty, is exactly the death he deserves. 

"It's done," Jon tells them all. "He's gone." 

Martin smiles, and on the other end of the phone, Daisy and Basira do too. Martin takes the desk-claw in his hand, running his thumb over the cold metal. "Jon?" he says. 

"Yeah?" 

"I love you." 

"Martin?" 

Martin looks up. "Hm?" 

"I love you too."

\---- 

Three weeks later, Tim is adding the final touches to Jon's new carapace. It's humanoid, but doesn't look human in any way - Jon's not a human, and he decided that he wanted his new body to reflect that. Instead, Jon had opted for a sleek build of matte black - though Martin had promised to paint it, at some point - with an LED screen instead of a face. (It's maybe slightly weird, but it's so _ Jon _, and Martin wouldn't have it any other way.) A final turn of a screw, and Tim turns to Martin, waiting at the doorway. "It's done," he says, with the crooked grin that is ever-present on his face. "Go and… take your man out for a date, or whatever. And don't break the body!" 

Martin's jaw drops, and his cheeks colour a faint pink, _ as if the first roses of spring are unfurling across his cheeks. _"I- I won't- TIM!" 

"I didn't mean it like that! I just - he's never walked before! What if he doesn't know how!" 

Jon's voice cuts a dry line through the conversation. "I promise to learn how to walk, Tim. And Daisy and Basira have already given me the shovel talk, so you don't have to repeat it." 

(Martin remembers the shovel talk, and the way that Basira and Daisy had had their hands twined together as they gave it to Jon. He remembers the lightness in their voices, the way that they obviously trusted Jon to be good to Martin - and they way they trusted Martin to be good to him, as well. It wasn't really a shovel talk, to be honest, but Jon had said that he loved Martin, and promised to keep him safe and… that meant the world.) 

"Good. Now, let's hook you up into this body and let you two go on your date." He turns back to the body and plugs in some wires, and a second later, it jerks slightly, and sits up. 

"Hi, Martin," says Jon. His face is simple - constructed of lines and shapes rather than any actual features - but he still manages to convey an incredible tenderness when he looks at Martin, with soft pink features that form a gentle half-smile. Martin holds out a hand, and Jon takes it, then stands beside him. 

"You ready to go?" asks Martin. Jon nods, and the two of them walk into the outside world. The sun is setting over the park they head to, and it paints the sky - and Martin's hair - a brilliant golden red. The grass is green, and soft beneath Jon's feet, and with Martin's hand in his, and the endless sky above, he feels a certain kind of invincible. 

And, when Martin kisses the side of his face with a soft and gentle reverence, he feels - for the first time - truly free.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are, as always, very much appreciated - they're really good motivation and make me write more! ^-^


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